The Scott Adams SchoolSpecial Guest: Steve Cortes @CortesSteveHosts: Erica @ZiaErica Owen @OwenGregorian Marcela @MarcelaMarjean Sergio @SergioInTucson Discussion: China's College Takeover Documentary 300,000 China Nationals in US University System Fine People Hoax, The Hoax Tentpole Media Hoax Promotions South America Elections 2026 Midterm Election~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~DISCLAIMER: This podcast makes no warranties or representations about the accuracy or completeness of the information provided. Viewers assume all risks associated with using or relying on this content.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've been laughing for 10 minutes straight since I saw this.
George Philip Willis, a newscaster, will hinge on several factors.
One, source of information.
Viewers might be more inclined to trust his statements.
Conversely, if he has been wrong before or shown bias, viewers might question his claims.
Three, context of the information.
Would make his assertion seem less credible or might suggest that he is part of a broader misinformation.
From a storytelling perspective, Leonard George is portraying someone engaged in gaslighting.
I could not start with that today.
Oh my God.
Good morning, everybody.
Okay, we're going to get right into the sip because we a special guest with us.
Okay, everybody, get ready.
It's time.
Hey, it's time for coffee with Scott Adams.
You came to the right place.
Boy, do we have a show for you?
Oh my God, it's going to be so good.
I know you can't wait.
But first, the simultaneous sip.
The thing you're all here for.
I know you are.
And all you need is a cup of mugger or a glass, a tanker, chalice, or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
I like coffee.
And try me down for this simultaneous sip.
That's the thing that makes everything better.
It's the dopamine hit of the day.
Go.
Oh, yeah.
Peachy.
He said impeachy.
Oh, my gosh.
So, you guys, let me grab my cup.
I'll have a sip after.
You guys, I'd like to welcome you all to the Scott Adams School.
And my name is Erica, and we have the beautiful Marcella.
We've got sexy Sergio.
More dapper than tapper is Owen Gregorian.
And our matriarch of all matriarchs, we have Shelly Adams and our special guest today, the amazing, the wonderful, talented, always has a better tan than me, Steve Cortez.
Welcome, Steve.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So just for those that don't know who you are, I'm not going to try to summarize who you are because I can go on for days.
But how would do you describe yourself to those meeting you perhaps for the first time?
Sure.
Probably the quickest way is political, operative, and TV talking head.
So I specialize in media, both doing live hits and responding and defending and promoting agendas on the air, but also creating media.
I make political ads.
Surefire Success Stories00:15:10
I make documentaries.
I do a lot of just phone videos.
I learned quite a lot about a lot of things, but including making media from Scott Adams over the years.
I've worked on and off for President Trump over the last decade, worked for JD Vance in his Senate campaign.
I'll be really involved in a lot of races into this fall.
Prior to that, I had a Wall Street life that got me into television kind of just by happenstance.
I really kind of stumbled into TV, business TV, but that then led to the political world.
And I'm now all politics and media and just taking on the small task of saving America and saving Western civilization.
No big deal, right?
That's all.
That's all.
Nothing big.
So I am curious to know what campaigns you're going to be working on.
I mean, we can get into that a little bit later.
And of course, we're going to have questions like, what do you think about 28?
And JD Vance, is it going to be Marco Rubio?
But there'll be time.
Okay, guys.
So I would love to kick it off like as a group chat because, Steve, I think one thing that I want to talk about right away, because the issues that we're having with China in our country are vast.
And from them buying up our property to strategic purchases of property also, which is very concerning to me near military bases and things like that.
But what you're doing is a documentary coming out on Thursday.
Yes.
And why don't you explain to us?
I did post a clip for people to see and I'll repost it after the show, but tell us what that's about and why it's so urgent.
Sure.
Thank you for the opportunity.
It's China's College Takeover.
And you can see, if you'd like to see a trailer for it, it's at the top of my social media right now.
If you go to my Twitter, which is at Cortez Steve, Cortez within S, Cortez Steve, you can see just a 30-second trailer.
But I think even in that 30 seconds, we convey, I hope, a powerful argument that this is really dangerous to America and it's unjust to American young people.
We have 300,000 Chinese nationals studying in the United States right now.
Some folks, including President Trump, want that total to actually go up.
I'm trying to make the case that that number needs to go down.
And in fact, it should actually be zero for two reasons.
Number one, it is a national security threat to the United States.
It makes no sense for us to educate our enemies.
And we know, as a matter of fact, not supposition, we know factually that at least some of them are here to spy, that they are spies and saboteurs.
That's probably the worst case scenario.
But even in the good case scenario, we are educating our enemies to then use our knowledge base to make their country better and at some point to use those very skills and that knowledge against the United States.
But then the second aspect of it is that, of course, these, you know, this is a zero-sum gain in terms of these top universities.
And generally, they do attend very prestigious, very selective U.S. universities.
They do not have endless seats, right?
Those spots, in my view, should be reserved overwhelmingly for American students, for American kids.
And I highlight in this documentary, this will be out Thursday morning, by the way.
It's free.
We'll be putting it everywhere on my website, on Twitter, on YouTube.
We just want people to see it.
We're not trying to in any way monetize this.
And I highlight the University of Illinois.
And I'm from Chicago, spent most of my life in Chicago until the crazies chased me out.
And I now thankfully live in the wonderful red state of Tennessee.
But I know Chicago is near and dear to me.
I know many people there.
And I kept talking to so many parents who had just outstanding young children.
I mean, just outstanding young adult kids who are applying to the University of Illinois and couldn't get in.
I mean, the kinds of kids with, you know, 4.2 GPAs, taking all the APs, getting a 35 out of 36 in the ACT.
I'm one of those parents, Steve.
Okay.
Okay.
And they can't get in.
And one of the key reasons is because selective American schools, and the University of Illinois is one of the best STEM schools in America.
University of Illinois is absolutely flooded with foreign students.
And I think there's way too many international students, period.
But the Chinese, to me, are by far the most ridiculous part of this equation because of the national security threats.
Because, again, we're educating our enemies.
University of Illinois, in the middle of the farmlands of America, in the middle of cornfields in central Illinois, has 6,000 Chinese students, 6,000 Chinese nationals.
By the way, I want to point this out.
A lot of the American students that they are replacing, they're taking the spots of, happen to be Americans of Asian descent.
Think about that.
So if you're a Chinese American citizen, if you're a Korean, your spot is being taken by an Asian national who is coming across the ocean from communist China, almost all of them, the sons and daughters of the power brokers of the Chinese Communist Party, to be educated at the University of Illinois.
And I begin this trailer and I begin my documentary with what I think is a powerful reminder: University of Illinois fighting the Line Knife football games broadcast in Mandarin Chinese.
That's how many Chinese students are there.
This to me is really troubling, and I think we need to wake up.
So I just have to ask one quick thing because this floored me.
Why does President Trump want more Chinese students here full well knowing what's going on?
I just, I don't understand.
Make it make sense.
It doesn't, but help me.
It does not make sense to me.
But, you know, listen, President Trump's instincts are almost always correct.
Sometimes he needs his ardent supporters like us to remind him of our basic philosophy.
I don't know why he has that stance, but I think it's important for us to just make our case.
And I'm certainly not attacking President Trump.
As a matter of fact, I don't think he's mentioned in the documentary.
We are just making the case: hey, this does not make sense for America.
Doesn't make sense for our kids.
Doesn't make sense for our national security.
And by the way, we are, of course, funding these schools.
So remember that we are paying to educate Chinese nationals, some of whom are spying on us, right?
And again, we know this.
They've been convicted.
They've been arrested.
University of Michigan, two more Chinese nationals were just indicted on bringing bioweapons into the United States.
This is outrageous.
And we're paying for it.
We're paying for the privilege of being spied on and the privilege of having our own children excluded from selective schools while Chinese nationals get in.
And let me just make this point too.
University of Illinois, of course, is the flagship public school of that state.
So it makes it, I think, even worse.
But the private schools, in many cases, actually get more government money than the public schools.
So for example, Columbia University, prestigious Ivy League school in New York, is half foreign.
Well, Columbia gets billions of dollars in foreign assistance, excuse me, in government assistance.
So we have a critical say in what happens at all of these schools because we are funding all of them, including the allegedly private ones that aren't really private when it comes to their funding.
Yeah.
Well, I agree with you 100%.
And like I said, I'm one of them that was directly impacted by this.
My son applied to University of Illinois for mechanical engineering and he got rejected.
And I'm sure there are a lot of Chinese students that got accepted into that program.
And because of that, he went to University of Wisconsin.
You know, pretty comparable school.
Sure.
But I had to pay out of state tuition because of that.
Yeah.
So I, I mean, my family lost over $100,000, I would say, just because of that, you know, because I couldn't get my son into University of Illinois.
Wow.
And I'm sure he had really good credentials.
Yes.
He had excellent grades, like straight A, GPA.
He had high test scores, everything.
I mean, when I applied to college many years ago, I got accepted by University of Illinois.
And back then, it was pretty much like a table.
You could just say, okay, if you have this test score in this GPA, you'll get accepted to this program.
And so you could tell right up front.
And I always thought it was kind of a deal that we made with, especially with the public schools, to say we're paying tax dollars into the University of Illinois if we live in Illinois for our whole life, right?
And so part of that deal should be that your kids get accepted into that school if they want to go there.
And it's, it is criminal to me to say that we would prioritize foreigners over those students, especially people that are in that state for a state school.
It's just, it makes no sense.
And especially from China.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, I mean, I agree with all your arguments about, you know, they're stealing intellectual property from us.
They've been doing it for decades.
And it makes it so much easier when we put all their people into our graduate programs and have them doing the research and giving them access to all this information.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
Yeah.
And part of the motivation specific to University of Illinois, of course, again, it's an issue nationwide, but part of the motivation for me to make this regarding U of I, I mean, I mentioned, of course, I just have a lot of knowledge there because I'm from Chicago.
But in addition, I watched Mark Andreessen, you know, the famous tech Titan who has now become pretty political and has mostly come over to the right politically, which is wonderful, of course.
And he went to University of Illinois among a lot of luminaries, by the way.
Larry Ellison went to University of Illinois.
So he's major companies, major figures in tech have gone to U of I over the years.
But Andreessen said, and he said he was a middle-class kid from Wisconsin who got into U of I, went there, and that was really the launching pad for his career success.
He said that he would not get in today.
And I play a clip of him saying that.
He said, as a middle-class white kid, I would not get into University of Illinois.
And he blamed the DEI quotas and then the foreign nationals being there.
And I thought that was pretty powerful.
If a guy is successful as Andreessen says, I probably don't get into Illinois, well, then we're not doing something correctly, right, for the students of Illinois.
And I totally agree with you that, first of all, it should be prioritizing Illinois students, right?
Overwhelming.
Secondly, Americans, of course.
Now, my argument in the documentary is one, two percent foreigners.
Okay, that might make sense.
Truly exceptional kids from around the world, but from friendly nations, okay, you know, from Canada and the UK, Japan, not from communist China, not the princelings of the Chinese Communist Party.
And again, there's 300,000 of them in the United States.
And there are at least some calls, even from Republicans, to let that number grow.
And I think that number needs to go to zero.
It just doesn't make sense for our country.
How does it change, though?
I mean, it's so, I mean, I guess it's follow the money.
I'm sure they're getting lots of extra.
I'm assuming they're getting Marcella allegedly that they're getting lots of extra kickbacks and favors or whatever, because why else would this be happening?
But my concern is that it's so far spread that like who's going to stop it?
Like the whole schools, the whole college admission is just so messed up that I don't know how you rein it in.
Who can do it?
Does it have to be some kind of new law passed?
It has to happen across the board.
I don't know.
Like, how do you solve it?
Any ideas?
Well, yes.
I mean, look, I do believe it will take ultimately legislation.
But, you know, how we solve it is this, right?
Is outrage and knowledge.
So let's get outrage.
It's proper, right?
Let's get educated on the situation.
And that's why I do these documentaries, right?
I'm trying to expose something.
I think a lot of folks aren't aware of this, especially if you don't happen to have young people in your life.
If you don't have sort of high school or college-age people in your life, you may not even really realize that this is going on.
So let's expose the problem, get educated about it, hopefully generate enough frustration, enough righteous anger about this, that there's a demand for action.
And then let's pressure politicians, including politicians on our side, including the leaders with whom we normally agree, you know, on 90-something percent of issues.
If we disagree on this one, let's make our case.
Let's be persuasive.
Let's use the lessons of Scott Adams, right, on persuasion of how do we persuade people that this is important for our country, that we shouldn't take the national security risk of the Chinese nationals, and that we should prioritize our own young people.
I would add too, and I try to make this point in the documentary, and I think I make it persuasively toward the end.
Well, I shouldn't say I make it.
I think my guest makes it.
He's a man.
He now teaches high school chemistry.
He went to University of Illinois for chemistry.
He is a black guy who grew up on the south side of Chicago, didn't have many advantages in life, single mom, but was a smart young man, studied hard, got his way to U of I on scholarship, majored in chemistry, then had a successful career as a chemist and has sort of retired into teaching high school chemistry.
Just a wonderful, genuine man, really patriotic, loves this country, loves U of I, loves the Illini and what they've done for him.
And he makes the case, you know, not only would that slot be taken perhaps by a Chinese national now, and his name is Tony Robinson, and young Tony Robinson doesn't get in to U of I, but Tony Robinson also met his wife there.
So it's not just about the education.
He had met his wife.
They have four beautiful grown children now.
They've been married for decades.
So there's also the social aspect of, you know, many of these schools are multi-generational, right?
There's generations of Illini fans who've gone there and now can't get in to the school that they have supported as a family forever.
You know, how many family formation opportunities will be missed because they're not there socializing.
And instead, we've invited in masses of foreigners into these schools.
And again, I think there's too many foreign students, period.
But I find the Chinese segment to be the most troubling.
And that's why I'm attacking that part first.
And again, remember, we're paying for this.
You know, whether you, if you've never been to college, if you've never set foot on the college campus, you are paying for these schools, including the private ones, including Harvard, which has the biggest endowment by far of any school.
Harvard, not surprisingly, actually, if you think about it, has the biggest endowment.
They have the most resources.
They also take the most government money because they're the most skilled at garnering it, right?
At attracting it.
And in some ways, I would argue, exploiting it and getting our money for their operations.
And then Harvard, I don't know the number exact, but I think it's about a third.
Almost all the IVs and selective schools are at least a third foreign right now, including a lot of Chinese nationals.
So I want to shine a light on it.
And from there, folks like the audience of this show who are activists, who are engaged, who are patriots, once we've shined a light on it, once hopefully folks have gotten educated and angry about it, then we move to the action stage.
And will it be difficult to reverse?
For sure, right?
For sure.
We're fighting decades here of momentum the other direction.
But these movements sometimes start small.
And before you know it, we're in power.
I mean, unrelated, but look at the Maha movement, right?
There was a time when the Maja advocates were considered coops, right?
When Robert F. Kennedy was considered by a lot of sort of credentialed people to be a wacko.
Well, he's now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, right?
And we're starting to change health policies.
Persuading The Unpersuaded00:04:59
So I know that's off topic, but I just use that as a motivating example of things can change materially.
And if you have the right argument, if you have the facts on your side, and if you're trying to do what's patriotically right for this country, and especially for young people, one thing I'll tell you, just my, just putting the trailer up, and it's gone crazy, it's gone pretty viral, just my kind of commercials for the documentary.
And I've heard from so many moms who are outraged.
You know, a lot of these mama bears, you know, you want to stir up the hornet's nest.
You know, you have a credentialed son or daughter of a mama bear, and you say, junior can't go to Virginia Tech, Junior can't go to University of Texas or to University of Illinois.
And by the way, that spot was taken by a Chinese national.
Those moms are motivated.
They are angry.
And I think they can be activated.
And I think this is also an issue where hopefully I'm always looking for ways.
And a lot of this also I learned from Scott Adams.
I learned so much from him.
But is look for ways to grow the coalition.
Work for ways to convince, to persuade new adherents to your belief system.
Maybe they don't believe with you.
They're not with you on X, Y, and Z, but can you pick them up on that next issue?
And I think this is a lane where we can convince and persuade some people who maybe don't agree with the MAGA general agenda in general, wouldn't call themselves America first, might not love Donald Trump, but this makes sense to them.
And particularly if they've had a personal consequence, if they've had their son or daughter denied or somebody they know, their nephew or their grandchild denied from these schools.
I think this is the kind of issue where we can persuade people who might not otherwise be with us.
And I'm always looking for those opportunities.
I think everybody here will retweet the trailer, you guys.
So everyone, please retweet Steve's trailer and let people know that the documentary drops on Thursday this week.
And it's true, like whether you're a taxpayer, like if you don't have kids, you're paying taxes, you're paying for this nonsense.
Or if you have children or you've experienced this, it's true.
It's not like a right or left issue.
It's an American issue.
It's a, you know, keep more money in your pocket to educate our country and our people.
I mean, we need it.
So that's the least we can do.
So I think everybody, will you guys drop an emoji in the chats if you are at least willing to retweet Steve's documentary trailer and lead people to it?
That would be amazing.
So what other actions can we take or should we take?
Like if I am outraged about this, should I be talking to my state legislature?
Should I be talking to my federal congresspeople?
Like, where should I be directing this outrage?
Yeah, no, great question.
Both, by the way, thankfully.
This is one of these cases where it can be both, right?
So for example, now Illinois is unfortunately a thoroughly blue state, so I don't expect much action there.
But this is happening in states that are either sort of, you know, middle of the road, purplish states, or actually deeply red states.
As I mentioned, I now live in Tennessee.
This is a big problem at the University of Tennessee, which is probably just about as prestigious now as University of Illinois, or at least in that ballpark regarding STEM.
And a lot of really smart kids can't from Tennessee cannot get into their flagship state university in part because of too many foreign students.
Now, thankfully, in Tennessee, right, Republicans control this state politically.
So I think there's a lot better chance that we can get state action here.
So to me, it's both.
You know, it's not an either or.
Pursue it in your state.
And again, I know that's difficult if you live in California or Illinois or New York.
It's going to be difficult to succeed, but still try to make some noise, of course.
But in those red or purple states, take state action.
So yeah, I think it's both.
But at the same time, most of the funding, most of it flows actually federally, especially to the private schools.
And again, let's not forget about the private schools.
Let's not let Stanford and Duke and Columbia off the hook because again, they are feeding to the public trough actually to a more substantial degree than UCLA and Florida State and University of Georgia.
So everyone is involved in this mess.
So let's not let them off the hook.
Those are federal issues, right?
They don't tend to get very much state and local money.
That's federal money going there.
So let's pursue both simultaneously.
But, you know, to me, this is one of these issues where if you present it correctly, I'm always looking for these as a campaign guys, a campaign operative.
We're always looking for these issues where the opponent is wrong on a 70-30, 80-20 issue.
And I think if this is presented correctly to reasonable people, this is a 70-30, 80-20 kind of issue.
I mean, I think the only people who would be in favor of hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals coming here are just wacko far leftists who are totally unpersuadable, who just aren't reasonable and, frankly, don't like the United States.
So they welcome an invasion of our enemies' children into the United States.
But I think reasonable people, if presented with this scenario, will say, yeah, that doesn't make sense, or at least at this scale, right?
Now, again, I want to go to zero, and I understand that's probably viewed as a pretty extreme position.
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But I think also sometimes you need to stake out in positions that may seem extreme to get us to a place that's more reasonable.
And folks may say, okay, maybe it's not zero like Cortez wants, but it shouldn't be 300,000 and it certainly shouldn't go to 600,000 as the White House had proposed.
So, you know, let's start debating this.
Let's start talking about it.
It's an important issue.
And I believe too, it's reflective of broader issues, right?
Of just prioritizing American citizens, period, right?
Whatever it is.
So, I mean, I think this is related to illegal immigration.
I think it's related to all kinds of really important issues.
Americans for too long have been shamed and guilted into believing that we cannot prioritize American citizens, when in fact, the opposite is true.
It is actually ethical and moral and logical for us to prioritize our own citizens, just as every country in the world should, and most countries in the world do.
Let's do that in all facets of life, including higher education.
Yeah, Sergio, did you?
Oh, sorry, did you want to chime in?
Oh, I would love to.
Because Scott always talked about you, Steve, in such a high regard.
And I didn't understand really why until this morning it hit me when Erika sent us that short video of you on Twitter, your tweet, one minute, and how you went, you cut through the BS and you started using the right words right away.
And that's what I love about Scott so much, and we all respect it because how much he respected people's time that way.
So, in regards to that, I can see that you understand really well that the word choice is what is going to make that impact on people, right?
In choosing those right words.
And I love how you're talking about less illegals, higher wages, right?
It's like you just get to it.
And I love that the reframes that you're doing in that regards.
Could you tell us a little more about how you came to that conclusion?
I saw in some of the last rallies by Trump the wages, too, you know, it's like higher wages, right?
So that was like the word wages, it looks like that we like to hear, right?
And so I'm really curious to know how you work on those techniques.
Yes.
No, thank you, Sergio.
Well, listen, first, I learned a lot of it from Scott Adams, and it's one of the many debts I owe to him and to his legacy.
And I think so many of us, you know, certainly those of us here on the show and so many in the audience, so many in the world, thankfully, were able to learn from this man because of the big platforms that he had.
You know, between Dilbert, between the show, his books, he just, you know, he reached millions.
And I was certainly one of them.
I admired him long before I ever got to know him and learned from him a lot.
And I learned even more once we developed a relationship, largely because of the Charlottesville find people hoax.
But regarding communication skills, yes, he certainly taught me that brevity is the coin of the realm, right?
And that the more concise we can be in a busy world, in a digital era, the more effective we will be, the more persuasive we will be.
And so, yeah, just to put it very practically, for example, that video I made this morning, and I wrote an article.
So, I think first, you know, your thoughts should be a bit more, a bit more detailed.
So, have detailed thoughts.
Okay, why is affordability an immigration issue?
Well, I think it's primarily because when foreigners, illegal foreigners, compete in the labor market against American citizens, wages are depressed.
Okay, secondly, having tens of millions of illegals present in the United States puts enormous strain on the housing supply of the United States.
So, rents are too elevated.
So, wages depressed, rents elevated because of illegals.
Now, we're starting to see illegals leave, thankfully, by the millions, thanks to President Trump, thanks to Tom Holman.
And guess what?
Real wages are jumping and rents are starting to ease.
Rents at four-year lows, and we can quantify all this.
So, what I do then is I write an article with the citations, with the numbers.
Now, admittedly, the article is kind of boring.
Okay, I want people to read it, obviously, but it's hard to persuade people with a serious sort of academic article.
I think it's important to have it out there, it gives you credibility and it shows that your mind can think that way.
And even that, by the way, condensing as much as I can.
I mean, believe me, if I just let myself, that article would have been 2,000 words.
Instead, I think I got it down to 700 words.
And I'm always shooting for six, 700, 800, 900 absolute max is what we find people will actually read.
But then take the article and turn it into a video.
And I do a script.
I don't always follow the script.
I don't always read it as a teleprompter.
As a matter of fact, I usually don't, but I still write myself a script so that it's in my head, even if I'm not actually reading it.
And I just keep cutting and cutting and cutting the script, right?
And part of that, by the way, I got from a movie, A River Runs Through It, which is, I think, a fantastic movie.
And in the beginning of that movie, they talk about how the boys, the two brothers, were homeschooled by their minister father.
And if you remember, if folks who have seen that, I think it's this amazing scene.
Their father, Tom Scarrett, I think is the actor's name, who plays the minister.
They write an essay for them and he says, okay, half as long, right?
And they bring it back.
Okay, half as long, right?
Which is not easy, right?
It's much more difficult to write short than write long.
But I try to take those lessons in my head.
So I sort of have a river run through it and Scott Adams in my head as I'm trying to cut things down and still convey the idea, but get that down, get that video down.
I think this one was 50 seconds.
So get it down, hopefully under a minute.
I try to go for 30 seconds.
That's not easy and get a serious idea across.
And then tape that video and hope people watch.
And, you know, I also really believe in trial and error.
Like, see what works.
I mean, thankfully, all this stuff's quantifiable now, right?
Instantly.
We can see, okay, how many views?
How many clicks did the article get?
How many actual reads?
You can tell, like, did they spend time on the article?
So, anyway, all of that is what I do.
Sorry if I gave you a non-brief answer to how I'm brief.
The goal of keeping it short is such a key because that's what makes people share it to others, right?
You want to share, you don't want to waste people's times, you know.
So, you want to share it to a friend.
I'm thinking, like, somebody that might want to watch your video, and I go like, well, it's 20 minutes long.
You know, I cannot do that.
So I cannot do that to his life, right?
But if you give me like one minute, 30 seconds, and the way you did it, oh man, I can repost that, send it out, make it, you know, everybody will get it.
I'm like, oh, I'm going to share that to my friend too.
So I love that.
Thank you very much.
No, of course, that makes sense.
And by the way, so like we did that, for example, I mentioned my trailer is 30 seconds, which I'm proud of.
We got that down to 30 seconds.
I think it's still really effective.
And certainly the numbers indicate it is.
The documentary is 28 minutes, which is still kind of short for a documentary.
Now, a lot of folks won't commit to that, which I realize, okay?
But I hope that if they commit to the 30 seconds, they've gotten the idea, right?
Now, I'd like them to go on to the 28 minutes, but again, a lot won't.
That's fine.
Let's give them multiple formats, right?
And we'll give them things in between, by the way, too.
We'll give two minute clips of the video that we'll put out.
And again, see what works and what works, run with it.
I love it.
So can you tell me more about how you met Scott and what you learned from Scott and also like how you worked together to fight the fine people hoax?
Yes.
So, no, it's really a great story.
And it's a great story how the pursuit of truth thankfully formed a real three-part friendship here.
You know, sort of the three amigos of Joel Pollack, Scott Adams, and me and Steve Cortez.
And it was because all of us, independent of each other, we were pursuing the truth on the Charlottesville Fine People hoax.
And in my case, it was because at that time I worked for CNN, which might shock people.
President Trump asked me to go to CNN, okay?
Asked me at the White House.
By the way, I was a Fox News contributor at the time.
This was 2017, so it was first year in office.
I worked really hard on the 2016 campaign.
I then signed a contributor contract with Fox News.
I was on Fox News in 2017 promoting President Trump's agenda.
And let's face it, pretty easy job in general promoting Trump on Fox.
I had a pretty cushy gig.
They treated me well.
They paid me well.
And now President Trump says, okay, for 2018, 2019, I need you to dive into the fire and go to CNN.
So I was kind of the Scottish Jennings where he is now in that day.
I wasn't thrilled about the ask, but you know what?
I said, I'll do it.
Number one, I want to support you, Mr. President.
I want to help this country.
The other reason I did it is in my business career before I got into politics.
I had done a lot of international work almost exclusively in Europe for hedge funds.
And so I was always traveling to Europe.
And I realized that CNN, unfortunately, is the global American channel for the world.
They don't see Fox News.
They don't see that much of alternative media.
They're starting to, shows like this, thankfully.
But they think CNN is the American network, unfortunately.
So I said, you know what, for that perspective too, I want to try to explain this movement to the world.
I want to try to persuade the world that we're not what you've been told.
So I agreed to go on CNN.
Well, on CNN, they constantly, constantly brought up the Charlottesville Fine People lie.
Now, I knew from the beginning that it was an absolute lie, that not only had Donald Trump not praised neo-Nazis, that he explicitly condemned them.
And I would say so all the time on live television.
They would immediately, you know, cut me off.
They would sometimes literally even cut the microphone off.
They put me in a timeout, even though I was, you know, a paid contributor to CNN.
They'd say, okay, you're not on for a week because you mentioned it again.
It was very frustrating.
I had become friendly with Dennis Prager.
I did his radio show quite a bit and told him about all of this.
I wrote an article, a very, again, kind of to a point.
I wrote a very serious article at Real Queer Politics that did pretty well, but just an article.
Video always does better, or at least in conjunction with an article.
Dennis Prager read that article and said, we need to do a video.
So I did one of his PragerU videos, his very famous five-minute videos.
He said, this is so important because he recognized early, and I think Scott Adams was coming to this conclusion at the same time, independent of each other, that this was the tentpole hoax, that this was the lie on which all the other lies was based.
Because if you can convince people that the president is a bigot, right, that he's a neo-Nazi, that he hates wide swaths of Americans who happen to be the wrong color of the wrong religion.
If you can convince them of that, then you can convince them of all kinds of other lies about this agenda and about President Trump.
And so we need to debunk it.
So I made this video.
It got tons of attention, thankfully.
President Trump tweeted it out, got millions and millions of views.
I ended up getting fired by CNN because of the video, but they did me a favor in that regard.
I'd been there at that point a year and a half.
I'd had enough time to move on anyway.
And thankfully, then Scott Adams and I started communicating at first just through DMs on Twitter.
And he said, Hey, we got to bring Pollock into this because he's doing great work on it as well.
So Joel Pollack was doing mostly written work at Breitbart on this issue.
I was mostly finding it on television on CNN.
And then Scott was doing his work on his show.
And so the three of us started a chat.
And at first, you know, I didn't know, of course, I knew who both of them were.
Again, I was a huge admirer of Scott Adams from afar.
But it was organic in the way that it developed and really became an online friendship and alliance where we really became the three amigos and would almost split up tasks and say, okay, you take this part of the attack and the hoax, you take this part.
And we always re-amplified each other's works.
You know, thankfully, all of us had pretty big platforms to try to spread the truth about this.
And it took years.
That's the thing I'll tell you.
It wasn't easy, right?
I mean, we fought like dogs on a bone.
It took years for us to debunk this hoax, but I think we finally have.
I think any reasonable person out there, you know, unless they're just truly deranged, I think any reasonable person now knows, now will acknowledge, even though they can't stand Donald Trump, they will acknowledge that that was a hoax.
And by the way, it's not just that the masses were won over.
It's also that some really important players, some really influential people in society, like Chamith talks a lot about this, and, you know, and other Silicon Valley folks who had believed it.
And once their eyes were opened, and I think largely opened because of the work of Scott Adams, right?
Because he was just an absolute persistent truth seeker, right?
And thankfully, and listen, and I'll give all the credit.
I think all three of us mattered.
He mattered the most.
Okay.
He was the most persistent.
I think he was the most persuasive on making these points.
But it did take the team and it was thrilling to be part of it.
It really was.
And particularly when ultimately, and this is kind of funny.
I mean, it took seven years, but Snopes, which is not really a fact-checking site, okay, pretends to be.
But when even Snopes finally admitted, okay, this was a hoax.
Trump never played.
Yeah, like six or seven years later, finally.
I mean, laughable, but it was, at least for me, a bit of a spike to football.
Okay.
We worked our tails.
But it's amazing how damaging the media.
I mean, that, that really, that was something I've never seen anything.
I remember watching President Trump speaking live that day.
I remember him, exactly what his remarks were.
And I just remember thinking to myself, oh, that's good.
That's like a good measured response.
You know, there's people on both sides of the issue and it makes sense.
And like, and then when all this outrage started, it was like, wait, what?
That like that never happened.
And Scott has an army of simultaneous sippers, and we were relentless.
And we were posting it and we were telling people.
And like, I have, I have like a whole folder on my computer of all the hoaxes we were debunking.
And so I have the transcript ready for the drinking bleach hoax and the fine people hoax.
You name it.
We have a transcript for it.
And also, I, when you said, like, you know, maybe some deranged people still believe it, which I immediately thought of Biden campaigning on it and Obama in the closing days of Biden's reelection campaign, still talking about it.
And this is where I got in trouble the other day because I said that like there should be some kind of like a free speech is free speech.
Feel like if you are in a position of influence or you're an elected official, or especially journalists, if you're an actual journalist, I just feel like you should have some kind of credentials taken away if you're spreading hoaxes because they're so dangerous.
Courageous Truthseekers00:04:04
They got people killed.
They created, you know, more racism and division in this country.
And like Scott said, you know, he's like, I lived through Watergate and he said, this is so much bigger.
And he said it was the worst thing he has ever seen in his lifetime as far as a hoax and a lie and something hurting our country.
And I don't know how that's that's one of my pet peeves is that the media knowingly spreads lies under the guise of journalism and there's never a penalty.
Right.
And you're so right.
Think of the tangible damage done to this country.
Think of the racial division that it sowed, all based on a lie, right?
All of it based on a lie.
That's why Dennis Prager, by the way, and I also should give him, he wasn't part of the three amigos, but boy, was he helpful.
And I would call him an adjunct member of the three amigos doing this.
And he calls it the blood libel of American lies, which is a powerful statement, particularly coming from a really devout Jew like Dennis Prager.
But I think he's right because, and you're exactly correct.
Thank you for bringing up Joe Biden.
Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign explicitly on this lie.
I mean, think of that.
I mean, that's outrageous.
And became the president of the United States, you know, launching the entire effort on a clear, refutable lie, you know, actually easily refutable for those who are willing to be honest about things.
But it also speaks to what Scott, of course, talked about constantly and taught us all about this split screen, two movies, right, at the same time.
So, you know, he was what I saw, there's so many things I admire about Scott Adams, but perhaps above all, it was his courage, his courage, that he was unafraid of the blowback.
He was unafraid of the career consequences, which we know for him were significant.
You know, a lot of us took career risks, you know, for our stances and for the pursuit of the truth.
He certainly took very significant ones, was willing to deal with the fallout, let the chips fall where they may, that he had principles that were more important than those temporal benefits.
And I think thankfully, what he did earn, what he may have lost in some of those career opportunities or some of that income, boy, did he make up for in the love and admiration of millions of people.
And I'm certainly one of them.
And it's one of the honors of my life, really, I say this, that I was able to become friends with him.
And again, all via the pursuit of the truth.
There's sort of no better way to strike up a friendship than, hey, we're both after the same truth here.
And because it's something very noble, right?
And it's a great way to become friends.
And what a privilege, you know, what a privilege for me.
And what a privilege for all of us that we got to, while he was alive, that we got to experience and learn from him.
And that we still do.
That's the beauty of him creating a body of work, right?
Is that it lives on.
It was on in this show, in his writings, in his recordings.
And that's a wonderful, wonderful legacy.
He was just, he was a patriot.
He was selfless.
And boy, did he have courage.
And I think that's a lesson for all of us.
We need more courageous people and courage is contagious.
When you act courageous, those around you will act courageous.
And I certainly found his courage to be contagious for me.
And I hope I radiated that out to others.
And it's hard for me to exaggerate how much of an effect, how impactful he was on my work and what I do in politics.
And politics, you know, as we all know, can be bruising, right?
And we're in an incredibly partisan moment in American history.
We probably haven't been this divided since the Civil War.
So, you know, this ain't beanbag, right?
I mean, this is, you know, this is serious stuff that we're talking about in terms of our political battles in this country.
And you need courage to stand for truth in an environment like this.
And that's not just for those of us who do it for a living, by the way.
That's for all the regular folks out there.
That's for the working class patriots who love this country.
And I know so many of them watch this show.
So many of them are admirers of Scott Adams.
Venezuelan Migrants' Journey00:03:54
And again, that's such an important part of his legacy.
And we learned from him so much while he was alive.
I hope we continue to learn from him and be inspired by him now.
Agree.
Marcella, did you want to jump in?
I just want to say I admire you very much, Steve, as Hispanic-American.
I really admire you.
And I wanted to ask you: you talked about recently making the Americas great again, the Colombian president, I think, visiting Donald Trump today, President Donald Trump.
And I wanted to know what your thoughts were on there.
You know, Chile turning to the right, and as well as Argentina.
So I wanted to get that more info on that.
Yes.
No, thank you for asking.
And thank you for your kind praise.
It certainly means a lot.
And yeah, listen, I'm always going to be America first, meaning the United States of America first.
But secondly, I have great affinity for Latin America.
My father came to this country legally from Colombia, was a patriot who loved this country and did it the right way, came to the United States.
And so I do have great love also for Colombia.
And I think strategically, beyond just my own affinity, strategically, the Americas really matter to the United States because America first has never meant America alone.
And I really believe in the original Monroe Doctrine.
I absolutely subscribe to the new updated Monroe Doctrine 2.0 that the Trump administration is pursuing.
His national security strategy document, by the way, that NSS document, it's a little bit wonky and I think it's about 30 pages.
But if you care about world strategy, if you're into that sort of thing, I think it's well worth reading.
It's fascinating and it's about as blunt as any official Washington federal government communique has ever been, talking about the problems of the old world, how the U.S. has always been so oriented toward Europe, understandably, right?
Because we are essentially a child of Europe as a country.
And because of the history of Europe and World War I and World War II and the Cold War, we have always been very oriented toward Europe.
But that the old world, in many ways, does not share our values anymore.
And that the home of Western civilization really no longer believes in Western civilization.
So it's up to the United States to carry that torch, to carry that flame forward.
And in terms of who are our best potential allies, well, they're right here in our own hemisphere.
And so, Marcelo, you mentioned Argentina.
I was just there.
I'm actually going to be going back to make a documentary there on President Millé, who I think is an amazing man, in many ways, the Trump of South America.
It's going to be make Argentina great again.
Luckily, we don't have to change any of the hats or stickers.
All right, it's MAGA.
But he is already doing that, by the way.
He's making Argentina great again.
Colombia, unfortunately, has a miserable leftist radical president, Petro, who hates America, who is widely suspected of being in bed with the cartels, who have unfortunately grown back in power there.
He's actually at the White House today, which is why I sent out from my Substack an article about the situation in Colombia because they have an election coming up in May.
And there's one candidate in particular who I think is excellent, who loves this country, who is Colombia first in his orientation.
He's a populist patriotic candidate named De La Espriea.
And I think he can win.
Now, I polled Colombia.
I do a lot of polling, and he's down, but he's within striking distance.
And I think with enough help from the United States, especially after the Maduro capture, we earned a lot of goodwill in Colombia by that capture of Maduro.
Colombia has a huge problem with Venezuelan migrants.
We do too, of course, but so does Colombia right next door.
There's about 2 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, and it's a problem for Colombia.
So they want stability in Caracas for their own selfish reasons, but also for the good of the hemisphere.
So can we win this election in Colombia?
Economy's Impact on Midterms00:10:19
I may be getting involved in that race.
I think we can.
You mentioned Chile.
Incoming President Cast is wonderful, loves this country.
So the right is starting to win in Latin America.
As of right now, we've got Argentina, Chile, Honduras.
We've got upcoming elections in Peru and Colombia, both of which I think are very winnable.
So if you're looking at sort of the map on the western side, on the left-hand side of South America, other than Brazil, sort of Spanish Latin America, I think we can be looking at a grand alliance of patriotic populism of making the Americas great again that unite from the Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Greenland, which I think makes sense.
By the way, Greenland is in our hemisphere.
And I think it's a big part of why President Trump very smartly has his sights on Greenland.
And I commend him for thinking strategically.
And again, our focus always is going to be on the United States first.
We are truly America first, but it doesn't mean America alone.
And building the Americas into a powerhouse of prosperity and sharing our values, I think that makes a lot of sense.
And I think it's actually really exciting in the bigger picture.
So I'm doing what I can, making documentaries, polling.
I might be getting directly involved in some presidential races there.
Thankfully, I have the reputation as being a skilled campaign guy.
So there are folks overseas who want my assistance with campaigns.
And as long as they have an, as long as they have the right orientation and as long as it's going to advance U.S. interests, I'm willing to at least give that a listen.
But there's exciting things going on, you know, both here and within the rest of our hemisphere.
I think with 10 minutes left, Owen, I kind of wanted to talk about midterms.
And I wanted to ask Steve, so I feel like these ICE protests are strategic to try to just make Trump look bad.
So, you know, we'll lose the midterm.
So they're going to keep them going on.
But what do you think about that?
What do you think about the midterms?
I feel like we're screwed if we don't win because then everything just gets, you know, put into a stall.
Yeah.
So listen, regarding the midterms, you know, and because I do a lot of polling and polling is never perfect, but this is polling that I run.
Okay.
So I'm not relying on polling from some lefty, you know, disreputable outfit.
And my polling, if passed as prologue in 2024, my polling was very, very accurate.
I got six of the seven swing states right.
I did not get Pennsylvania right, but I got the other six.
And most importantly, I got the Sunbelt states right very early.
And so the groups that I work with, the outside groups, we devoted all of our attention and resources into those northern three swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, largely based on the polling that showed me that those Sunbelt four were put away, which thankfully they were.
So I'm reasonably confident in my strategy and my methods.
It doesn't mean it's perfect.
And my polling right now shows that we're in a pickle.
Okay, we are in a corner.
We're up against the wall because of the economy, not because of the ice raids.
I'll address that in just a sec, but because of the economy.
And people right now still have real economic anxiety.
While things are getting demonstrably better, and they are, and I point this out again in my article on why immigration leads to affordability.
They're getting better, but it's not been enough, not better enough, not enough time of getting better for them to be convinced that this is the right trajectory.
And right now, Americans blame Republicans as the governing party.
And you may say that's not logical, and I understand those arguments that a lot of this is hangover from Bidenomics and from the disaster of Biden.
The reality is right now today, you know, as we sit here, people do blame the Republicans for an economy that isn't working for them.
And working class people still have an affordability issue.
Now, again, I think we're doing the right things.
And I think the trends are very positive.
I do think that a lot of the messaging around that from Republicans, from the White House, hasn't been terrific.
For example, I think we need to acknowledge that, right?
You can't convince people in terms of like Scott Adams lesson on persuasion, you can't just convince people that their economic situation is great when they know it isn't right.
In other words, when they know that they're stressed about their bank account, when they know that going to the grocery store gives them anxiety.
You can't just say, oh, no, but the economy is great.
So in other words, acknowledge that we realize things aren't still wonderful, but it's on the way.
Help is truly on the way.
And the number, and it's not just a hope and a promise.
The numbers show it, right?
We can show rents just hit a four-year low, right?
That's important.
It's really important for us to talk about.
But we have to persuade in the right way.
Part of persuading is acknowledging that there's a problem and that we are addressing the problem in a very aggressive way.
Now, we have time until November, okay?
Not a lot of time, but we have time until November.
If I had to make a prognostication, if I'm trying to be honest about things right now, we are going to hold the Senate.
As a matter of fact, I think the Senate will probably have no net change.
My baseline right now, if the election were today, is we pick up Georgia, but we lose North Carolina to the Democrats and all the other states stay the same.
That would be my Senate projection right now.
If the election were today, I think we lose the House.
I think we lose the House narrowly, but I do think we lose the House.
And I agree with you, that could be catastrophic, right?
Because what happens if there's a Speaker Jeffries?
Well, he moves immediately to investigations.
Because guess what?
When the Dems get power, they use it, okay?
They don't act like Republicans.
They're not a bunch of squishes like Speaker Johnson and his comrades are on Capitol Hill.
They use power and they immediately wield the powers that the voters give them.
And if that happens, they're going to move to impeach President Trump.
They're going to move to impeach Tom Holman, probably other folks.
And that would be disastrous for this country.
So I'm not trying to be depressing anybody, by the way.
I guess I'm trying to be motivating.
It's not unwinnable by any stretch, right?
I think it's a close call right now.
It is winnable, but let's also recognize we're down.
Okay.
And I think it's important for us to be realistic about that, that we're down.
The reasons of the economy, though, it's not immigration.
Immigration continues to pull very well.
Yes, the sort of important people in the country, their hair is on fire, right?
Very wealthy people who, many of whom have very big media platforms, their hair is on fire.
Regular folks, that is not the case.
They support immigration enforcement.
And I think the more we connect immigration enforcement to affordability, right?
The more we make that argument that I made in my video today, the better off we're going to be.
That there's a lot of reasons to enforce immigration, but the number one is it helps make your life more affordable.
And part of why your life got so unaffordable was because of the open borders of Joe Biden.
We're fixing that.
We fix both problems at once.
So let's make that case together.
Do you think that there are other promises or other plans that Trump needs to come out with?
I know, remember what Scott said not too long ago that one of the issues was that because Trump has already done many of these things, he can't really run on that for the midterms and that people are looking for change, looking for, you know, what are you going to do that hasn't already been done?
Are there things that you would suggest that Trump should come out with as far as what he's going to do in the next two years?
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
And here, for example, closing the border, which is a magnificent success, right?
Closing the border, in a sense, almost works against President Trump in a strange way, right?
Because you're exactly right.
It was accomplished.
It was accomplished so quickly and it's seemingly easily that people just move on mentally, right?
And that's a problem politically because he doesn't get credit for a massive win to protect the American people, but it's hard to just keep reminding people of that into 2026 and certainly into 2028.
I mean, people are of the mentality of, you know, what have you done for me lately, right?
So, you know, what's the new win for us?
And I think there, to specifically answer your question, you know, so what new, what new can we can we promise people?
I really believe that we need tariff rebates.
Number one, because affordability is the chief concern of Americans.
And I think it makes sense to try to put money in a sensible way into their pockets.
But number two, I think people deserve it.
Working class people in America have been abused for decades by awful trade policy that exploited American workers and rewarded the credential elites of the United States and the globe.
Now that we have sensible trade policies and now the tariffs are bringing in tens of billions of dollars of revenue, I think a dividend for working class Americans makes sense.
So this isn't just about politics, although I think the politics will be very fortuitous if we in fact do this.
Now, can President Trump get it done in time through Congress?
I don't know.
He's, of course, talking about doing it unilaterally.
That would obviously be challenged in court quickly.
I don't know if that would survive and if the money gets to people.
But in terms of to answer your question directly, of something tangible and real and now tariff dividends to me make a lot of sense.
It makes sense anyway, just as a policy, but then looking at the politics of it, of convincing people, hey, I care about you.
My new policies are tangible.
They result in revenue for the United States, part of which you deserve a share of, and you deserve a share of it right now, not just in the bigger sense, but actually in your bank account.
That I think would do wonders for us into the fall.
I'll tell you this, the other issue in terms of something new, what's going on in Minnesota, right?
The mass Somali fraud, it's almost like we wrote this story.
It's so advantageous for Republicans.
So the more we can focus on that and the more we can uncover similar frauds, looks like that process is happening right now in California.
If we can correctly brand the Democrats as the party of fraud and specifically the party of fraud by foreigners, that is a really compelling new reason to vote for Republicans, that this will not happen under Republican leadership.
This will not happen if President Trump has a majority on Capitol Hill.
The Democrats are the party of systemic fraud and often systemic fraud by foreigners.
So I would say those two things, territor dividends, and then this new issue because of what's going on in Minnesota.
Mass Somali Fraud Exposed00:03:28
Very important.
Very, you know, it's just very important.
Also, you think about someone like Nick Shirley.
I mean, he made a tweet the other day just saying, California, I'm here.
So like this, this type of show, you guys, for all of us on here, we are, like Elon said, we're the news now.
And, you know, Steve's going to get a lot more traction because he's been on here with all of us and like the replay of this show.
And a lot of people listen later, Steve, or the next day.
And we are definitely an army of people that are not afraid to go out there and talk to people, to post about it, to re-share your video and tell people what's going on.
And we have to just, you know, say thank you so much.
You have an open invitation to come here anytime.
We loved having you here.
We all, they all already committed to sharing your trailer.
We're all a 28-minute long documentary.
Yes, everyone can watch that.
And it affects everybody.
So we truly thank you so much.
Sergio, you have something to say?
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you.
Steve, I was one of those people that believe they find people hoax 100%.
I was living with a liberal back then and I took it all in.
And the way I loved it when Erica was talking about it, because she was mentioning how she was watching it and the two movies and one screen, right?
Because I was not following Scott Adams at that point.
I had no idea.
I knew about Dilbert, but I was not following him.
So I had no filter to see that, right?
So I believe the 100% in the way they did it was by emotions, the emotions that they made me feel at that point, right?
They kept playing the same frames with the tiki torches over and over again.
They will overimpose Trump's face, you know, overexposed hair.
And that had the effect, you know, that I had no idea that it was having an effect on me because I was unaware of all these techniques.
So you saved me and with Scott and everybody and a lot of us, you know, so thank you for that.
And now we have to use those techniques against them, right?
So what you're saying is that to create a fear in them from the invaders, right?
From the people that are taking away our wages.
So something like that, right?
So thank you very much, sir.
You're back.
So you guys want to say goodbye to Steve and we'll let him go.
I promised him we'd be done at the top of the hour, which is where we're at.
So please come back anytime.
I will ask you again.
And we will all share it.
Good luck with the documentary and everything you're doing.
And thank you for everything you're doing.
And we'll see you back here soon.
I hope we want to do a closing sip to our beloved Scott.
We miss you and we love you, Scott.
And we will see you guys tomorrow.
And there's Shelly.
We love you, Shelly.
And Joshua Lysak's going to be on with us tomorrow.
He has a lesson.
Thanks to Scott.
He's going to teach us for the first part of the show.
to scott to scott to scott bye guys See you tomorrow.